The Senior VP

My boss looks like hell: dark circles under blood shot eyes, gray complexion, very grim. "Did you get any sleep last night?" I ask. He shakes his head.
We and a few colleagues are waiting nervously outside the Senior VP's office, not yet sure why he summoned us.
Suddenly his door swings open. A blast of cold air, the temperature plummets. I can see my breath, my heart races. An enormous black beast with flared nostrils and fiery yellow eyes bounds into the hall. His snarled lips reveal fangs dripping with blood and spit. "Documentation!" he bellows, then commands us into his office. As we stumble in, four young guys pass us on their way out; they look like early christians after a bad day at the Coliseum.
The beast roars "These docs are terrible! I can't imagine what you've been doing this past year."
He's referring to a doc set acquired from another company. These docs were in bad shape when we got them; we did what we could in the time we had, but not as much as we wanted.
The beast thunders a few more accusations: Why didn't we re-architect the doc set, explain how to configure the DMZ, and SSL, and seven or eight other concerns he'd gleaned from customers? "You have an enormous amount of work to do on these docs before the release." With that, he looks at us as though we should simply haul our asses out of there and get crackin'.
But I blurt: "Well, these are excellent suggestions, and I see no reason why we can't implement them." It startles him that anyone would speak up at all, even agree with him. But then I close in: "But is there any reason we are getting these suggestions so late in the release cycle? Thanks for bringing these customer issues to our attention, but this is the first I've heard of any of them. And, as for the re-architecting, I completely agree that this doc set badly needs it. But the guidance we received from your VP was that this was not the release to re-architect them."
He is speechless, vulnerable, almost like an ordinary human being who's just been called to task. "Well, I didn't think...I would have to be...the one to... spot these problems." He glares at his product manager who had obviously not reviewed the docs as she'd been charged. He opens the door and waves us out.
I'm feeling good. I've kept my cool, listened to his concerns and responded to them appropriately, and made my own concerns known as well. In this brief moment, I am a magnificent butterfly freed from the spider's web, a prisoner exonerated and released, a christ sprung from the tomb. I'm off to the next task, strutting as I go.